


Bittersweet

by CaptainMcCloud



Category: Star Fox Series
Genre: Gen, Short & Sweet, but i can tag that, look sometimes emotions are complicated and that's fine, there's not much here to tag really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 08:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17525135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainMcCloud/pseuds/CaptainMcCloud
Summary: Victory is often more complex than those claiming it deserve to bear.





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't published in ages, but I feel like this is good enough to share with you guys. I had a good time writing this, and I hope you like reading it just as much.

He’d felt almost lighter than air as he dropped onto the landing bay floor, still almost too stunned to bask in his own achievement. He was alive. Somehow, unbelievably, he was alive, and Andross wasn’t. He hadn’t imagined things would end so well for him. It felt somewhat surreal in the instant he knew he was okay, clearing the tunnel entrance as an explosion closely trailed him. Almost as he’d felt some other universe splitting away from him, where things had gone about as well as he’d assumed, and Andross had succeeded in taking him with his final act of fiery spite.

But Slippy’s sudden hug felt unbelievably real, as he staggered into it, slightly dazed from the unbelievability of the previous events. He was okay. It was okay. All his friends were okay. Everyone was fine. His chest hurt from stress and rushed breaths.  
“Fox! You’re alright!”  
He smiled, patting the frog on the back.  
“I... it’s done. Andross is dead. Shit, I didn’t think... I didn’t think that would go so well.”  
Peppy smiled, seeming prouder than Fox had ever seen him before. That felt better than anything had so far.  
“Well, he’s finished, and you’re going back home in one piece. That’s what’s important.”  
Falco walked past him, smacking him on the shoulder as he passed. Slippy stepped back.  
“Damn it, Fox, you should’ve let us follow you!”  
“Weren’t you chewing me out for for saving your tail earlier?”  
“Shut up, you’re making too much sense.”  
He laughed, looking back at his Arwing. The gravity plating was deeply scarred in some places from unearthly lightning, one wing torn off from a close turn during his escape. He still couldn’t shake what he’d seen, horrifying and amazing as it was.  
“Good thing Pepper’s paying for repairs on this. I... wow. I don’t think anyone could’ve known what he’d become.”  
Falco ran a hand over one of the jagged channels in the plating.  
“Yeah, I guess you didn’t just find some schmuck in a lab coat.”  
“I don’t think we’ve got words for whatever was left of him. I’ll... try to explain later. I don’t know what’s wrong with that planet, but not a bit of what I saw should’ve been possible.”  
He was conveniently dancing around his escape. Fox started moving towards the hallway, headed to the bridge.  
“I can explain things later. For now, I think we’ve all got some good news to deliver home.”

 

After contacting Pepper and relaying word of their victory, Fox was left with a few moments to appreciate things. The stable familiarity of the captain’s chair, all the reassuring readouts he could ever ask for. His shoulders were bruised and his wrists ached, from getting thrown around in the cockpit and being so tense at his Arwing’s controls. He threw his weight back into the chair, his head tilted towards the ceiling as he laughed in relief, and a subtle incredulous joy that came with cheating death.  
“Well, guys, that’s it. It’s over. I don’t see a way things could’ve gone better since we set off. Let’s go home.  
Falco looked up from his station.  
“No kidding. Nobody’s dead that doesn’t need to be. Still got a little too close for comfort, though.”  
He stood up, and stretched.  
“I’m beat. I think I’m gonna sleep the flight back out.”  
Slippy looked up, too.  
“Right, I guess I need to do damage assessments. What even happened to your Arwing, Fox? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Fox froze, struggling to explain what he’d seen without breaking down. His voice shuddered.  
“I don’t think you ever will again. There wasn’t any man left in him, but I’m not sure he was quite a monster, either. I... uh, I hesitate to say this, but he was... he was sort of like some twisted deity. Power that didn’t make sense, a form that didn’t make sense, all of it dedicated to his favored kind of cruelty. It was... unbelievable.”  
He froze for a moment, reminded of the second encounter he’d had.  
“Actually, can you pull and duplicate the data crystals for sensor logs? I’m going to need at least three copies. The General isn’t going to believe what happened down there without any evidence.”  
He also wanted to know if what he’d seen leading him out was real. It couldn’t have been, but wanting it to be real? There was nothing he’d ever wanted more. Absolutely nothing.  
“Alright. Sure thing, Fox.”  
The pair left for their own reasons, leaving Fox alone with Peppy. The old hare turned towards him.  
“Fox, what exactly was it you saw on Venom?”  
The captain put his head in his hands. He could still see it.  
“He was a massive, disembodied, head. Gradually, anything recognizable was destroyed or sloughed away as we fought. By the end, he was a pair of eyes, and a brain, and a tangle of nerves. Somehow, he could project lightning between the brain and the eyes, and it clipped me a few times. As he died, he triggered some sort of self destruction sequence, and I nearly died, but I was able to make my way out of Venom alive.”  
His tone was even and matter of fact. He'd been thinking a lot about how he was going to explain this to Corneria. He'd essentially pulled his harrowed description of the man from the mission report he hadn't yet begun writing. From anyone else, it would've seemed downright detached, but for Fox, it was as if he were trying and failing to separate the aberration he'd come face to face with from himself. He still didn't want to believe such a thing could exist.  
“That’s... remarkable. Terrible, of course, but amazing that he was able to do such a thing to himself.”

There was silence for a bit.  
“What about what you aren’t telling us, though?”  
“No, that’s it.”  
“Fox, you’ve got to tell someone. You climbed out of your cockpit looking like you’d seen a ghost.”

For several long minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the engines, and shifting machinery.  
“It was dad. I saw dad.”  
Fox hadn’t realized he’d started crying. He could still see him. Hear his voice. He wanted to hold on to that forever. Peppy seemed stunned.  
“Do you... do you think Jim’s alive?”  
“I don’t know. He guided me out of the tunnels, and then vanished when I went to look for him. He didn’t show on radar. I’m hoping some other sensor caught... something.”  
He looked up, met with a tearful smile.  
“It’s a chance, of course.”  
“That’s better than what we had yesterday."  
“I miss him.”  
“We all do, Fox.”  
“If that was him... I don’t understand why he’d just leave.”  
“Who knows? Maybe this is what he calls a retirement.”  
“Hah. Maybe.”  
The thought made things a little better.  
“Get some rest, Fox.”  
“You too, Pep.”  
“I’ll try.”  
He glanced towards ROB64 as the rabbit left. The simple android was the last thing his dad had left him, an extension of his father’s ship. What hurt most was how little there was left of James. Mostly just a robot, a ship, Peppy, and a few extra pairs of aviators. But maybe that was enough. Maybe.

Fox watched the comms panel, hoping for an answer that he knew would never come. It was the hardest night of his life. He slept on the bridge, waiting for a transmission that nobody had sent.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please leave a comment, so I know what you'd like to see more of in the future. I'm always happy to hear what you like, and don't like, about my work.


End file.
